Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I very strongly support the amendment. There is no definition of parental responsibility other than in Section 3 of the Children Act 1989, which sets out the responsibilities of a parent and does not actually say what is meant by it. This is one occasion, if I may put it like this, where Scotland is ahead of us. The fact that it is in statutory form in Scotland is a good indicator to us, because the Scots are very keen on child welfare, that the wording there would be appropriate for us. There are a number of court decisions on what is meant by parental responsibility. That is absolutely useless for most people because you have to trawl through the cases. What is needed—and I very much endorse the amendment of my noble friend Lord Northbourne—is a clear recognition in statute, not only of the importance of the parental position but is a clear and simple definition of what parental responsibility actually means. It may be that it was not needed in 1989. I remember being very much involved in 1987-88 in giving advice on the Children Bill and then going around the country, on what we used to call road shows, training the judiciary and the lawyers on how to work the Children Act. This point did not come up then, but I think that, nearly 20 years later, the rather unhappy experience we have seen through the courts and particularly for social services, the Probation Service and, indeed, the criminal justice system, shows that some understanding of what is really meant by parenting needs to be in primary legislation. For those reasons I support the amendment.